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Stereolab “Metronomic Underground”

When Stereolab perform “Metronomic Underground” now, Laetitia Sadier introduces it as music for “meditation.” I’d never thought of the song in that way before, but when I consider how I’ve engaged with it through the past few decades, I somehow instinctively understood this intention. It’s a song I’ve always gravitated to when I need to find a center, or a feeling of peace and harmony in a hectic world. I’ve always heard the music as being specifically urban, like a musical depiction of a city observed from a distance, people and cars and trains moving to a hidden groove.

This is one of my favorite pieces of music. If I had to make a list of my top songs through my life, it’d probably be top 10. I can never understate how much I love this song, and its bass groove in particular. The arrangement feels geometric to me, like shapes moving and aligning around that bass in a steady lateral progression. There is a profound sense of balance and precision to the music, but it’s performed with a very human energy. Live versions of the song go faster, and include extended noisy sequences. The version the groop performs in 2019 does both of these things, but also shifts the tempo around – it slows near the end, but it’s a bit of a fake-out as it picks back up before the conclusion. It’s like the music is an immaculately designed map, and the band takes different paths through it every time.

The lyrics for “Metronomic Underground” are essentially evergreen in relationship to a culture with some form of media, but feel particularly prescient about the time we live in now. “Who knows does not speak, who speaks does not know” sums up the state of political media. “Rounding the sharpness, untie the tangles,” a good description of the urge to simplify the complexity of art and human experience in the interest of harsh moral judgment or a refusal to engage with contradiction. “To be infinite, to be vacuous,” a pithy summary of social media. This is all very cynical, but it doesn’t undermine the meditative quality of the music. The critique is abstracted and removed from context in a way that suggests an eternal truth. It’s all something to be understood, a state of human nature. You have to find your peace with it.

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Sault “Masterpiece”

“Masterpiece” is built around around a bass melody that’s warm and comforting in tone, but conveys a low-key melancholy feeling. The vibe isn’t sad so much as doubtful, as the singer lays out a romantic scenario in which she’s fully invested in someone who keeps her waiting and unfulfilled. The vocals are soulful and bittersweet, full of love but also the gradual realization that this is just not going to work. She’s not ready to give up or give in, but she knows it’s almost time to cut and run. Until then she’s still trying to will a fantasy into existing, and her imaginary life is too enticing to ignore.

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Nine Inch Nails “Somewhat Damaged”

The first part of “Somewhat Damaged” sounds like sharp wires and tightening screws, the second part sounds like being smashed by a dozen giant hammers. Nine Inch Nails have always been labelled as “industrial” but this song actually sounds like you’re being fed through a Pretty Hate Machine in Trent Reznor’s rage factory. The tension builds and the rhythm tightens as the song moves along, and Reznor’s voice responds by getting louder and angrier. When he finally starts screaming a chorus – “TOO FUCKED UP TO CARE ANYMORE!” – the music thwarts the catharsis by getting even more tight and oppressive. That key lyric calls back to a running theme from Reznor’s The Downward Spiral era – “nothing can stop me now because I don’t care anymore” – but this music, the first song on the follow-up record The Fragile, makes something very clear: No, you’re definitely stopped. You’re crushed. You can’t win and nothing will save you. Maybe you ought to actually care now.

The final third of the song shifts gears. The tension subsides a bit, and the perspective pulls back. Reznor sings in a softer and more vulnerable tone over clashing rhythms, and his lyrics move from self-castigation to recriminations aimed at some other person who has betrayed him. This is the part of the song that’s always gotten deep under my skin, when he sings about feeling totally abandoned at his lowest point. He seethes over the broken promise of support, and while you get the sense that maybe he’s done his part to burn this bridge, his anger over being lonely and lost in this dark moment is overwhelming. The real catharsis of the song comes at the end when he unleashes his full fury: “THEN MY HEAD FELL APART AND WHERE THE FUCK WERE YOU??” It’s an impotent rage – unheard by who he’s addressing, and damaging to himself. But it’s a brutally honest response to getting stuck in this trap of his own making.

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Brittany Howard “Baby”

The arrangement of “Baby” is lovely but halting and tentative, just like the person Brittany Howard is singing about. They’re hot enough to draw you in but unwilling to give much or even show up, and expect that hotness to make you forgive every other shortcoming. Howard sings her lyrics with a resigned exasperation, like she’s rolling her eyes every time she sings the word “baby.” The feeling of the song is like that expression “I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed” set to an R&B slow jam. It’s serious enough to convey some heartbreak, but it’s mostly playful in tone, particularly in the final third when the tempo starts to slow like a pendulum gently swaying its way back to stillness. It ends without drama. It’s just time running out.

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Sabrina Claudio “As Long As You’re Asleep”

“As Long As You’re Asleep” is a sensual R&B ballad that’s almost entirely about insecurity and jealousy. Sabrina Claudio sings from the perspective of a woman who is so hopelessly in love that she feels removed from time and space, just moving through life in a daze any time she’s not hooking up with this magic lover. She sounds woozy but dazzled, and right on the edge of acknowledging that she feels awful. The chorus is what really stings, where she’s imagining them in bed with someone else and just hoping they’re asleep rather than having sex. You know a situation is sad when the best case scenario for the paranoid fantasy in the song is that she’s the other woman for a married or coupled person, and not just another girl on the side. But you know, if they’re asleep they’re not doing anything or thinking of someone else. What a depressing thing to cling to, but I totally get this feeling she’s putting out there.

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Fountain “Cataclysmic Fusion”

Fountain call back to a sort of indie rock that’s been out of fashion for quite a while: extroverted, rowdy, weird, and abrasive but heavy on grooves. Think of Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, or Royal Trux, or Girls Against Boys, or maybe the more aggressively strange side of Pavement. Their songs are well put together but feel like they’re being improvised on the spot, thanks in large part to the wild energy of drummer Laura Jeffery. “Cataclysmic Fusion” has a geeky strut to it – not quite funky, but it moves with a lot of attitude. It’s the sort of tune that could be very obnoxious if the band weren’t so charming in a bratty sort of way.

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Samia “Ode to Artifice”

A title like “Ode to Artifice” suggests a song that’s overly cold and clever, but Samia’s music and lead vocal exudes a warmth that overwhelms the more arch elements of her lyrics. The melody, which at some points sounds like it could break out into “This Old Heart of Mine,” seems to wind gently around a guitar groove that feels very casual without sounding particularly loose. The lyrics address some anxiety and social confusion, but it’s nothing too heavy – like, how stressed can she be when she’s affectionately addressing someone as “honeybun” in every chorus?

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Magdalena Bay “Only If You Want It”

There is no shortage of young artists aiming for late 90s/early 00s pop aesthetics, but a real dearth of artists who can actually provide this beyond a surface-level glossiness. But here’s Magdalena Bay, a duo who have somehow written a bright, hyper-infatuated bop with the melodic grace and effortless bounce of an actual early Britney Spears hit. “Only If You Want It” sounds great and feels very authentic in large part because the composers understand that writer-producers like Max Martin were aiming to replicate ‘90s R&B, and the bones of the song are rooted in those traditions even if the aesthetics are all neon plastic and overbearing sunshine. They push the cheery hyper-pop vibe to an extreme, and follow through on a conceptual level with lyrics that come across as playfully unhinged as they push the “I’m obsessed with my crush!!!” boilerplate sentiments of teen pop to a deranged conclusion.

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Modern Nature “Footsteps”

It takes a little over a minute for the saxophone to show up in “Footsteps,” and when it does, it entirely shifts the emotional register of the song. Everything else in the song up to the point it enters – and then on through the end of it – feels cool and neutral, but the sax lead is forceful and emotive. It’s somewhat jarring, particularly in contrast with the cool and aloof tone of the vocal. It takes over the song as it moves along, and it’s like this strong and sort of inappropriate emotion cracking through in a situation that calls for polite decorum. The feeling is held somewhat in check, but it’s still a disruption of a chill vibe.

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Belle & Sebastian “This Letter”

Belle & Sebastian have erred on the side of maximalism for a long time now, partly a result of being a band with so many members. But “This Letter,” a song from their new soundtrack Days of the Bagnold Summer, is almost startlingly minimal: Mostly just Stuart Murdoch’s voice and a gently plucked acoustic guitar, but with an understated muted trumpet solo and a subtle organ part. Murdoch’s melody is gorgeous enough that he doesn’t need to work in choruses or refrains – it’s a classic folk structure, a series of verses broken up by brief musical interludes.

The lyrics are written as a letter to someone very important to Murdoch that he hasn’t talked to in some time, and going on some clues in the first verse, it’s most likely an ex-girlfriend. But the contents aren’t sad, dramatic, or romantic. It’s mostly just admitting that while they’re apart for good reason, she’s still on his mind from time to time. It’s basically a song dealing with a problem I think most any adult can relate to: When you’ve connected with someone and can have a sort of conversation with them you can’t have with anyone else, what do you do with the part of you who needs that particular thing when the relationship has changed and you can’t get it anymore? You can write a letter like this, but I’m inclined to say you probably shouldn’t actually send it.

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Octo Octa “Move Your Body”

“Move Your Body” works very well as a utilitarian dance song – the beat is powerful, the synth riff jabs with the joyful vigor of a ‘90s Jock Jam, and a voice tells you over and over and over to move your body in order to get you to acquiesce and move your body. The fun trick of this song is the way the repetition of body can push you into your head and get self-conscious: Body. Body. I have a body. I have to move my body. My body must respond. My body is here. My body is here for movement. My body is here for pleasure. My body is my body. But rather than freeze you up, Octo Octa nudges you towards a positive conclusion: I love my body, and I should have fun.

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La Neve “A Pretty Red”

Imagine someone trying to do early 80s post-punk, The Rapture, “Groove is in the Heart,” and Primal Scream circa their Screamedelica Madchester phase all at once. That’s more or less what’s happening in this song, though it still feels like selling it a bit short. La Neve is throwing together a lot of different but familiar musical ideas and the result is surprising cohesive, thanks largely to a feverish vocal performance that serves as a focal point for the composition. Picture it in cinematic terms – it’s like the camera follows her around as the music is scenery shifting behind her. It wouldn’t work with a less charismatic presence, and you end up hanging on every word without it all needing to make sense. The message of the song is clear enough on the repeated line that stands out the most: “Here I am – a precious gem!”

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In Flagranti “Rather Sexy”

In Flagranti, true to their name, specialize in a sort of dance music that evokes an extremely horny atmosphere – seedy, humid, sticky, and louche. It’s ambient perversity. But there’s always a wink to it, a campiness that doesn’t cancel out the lust but instead amplifies it by amping up the perv factor and making you think “oh is this how the sleazes of the past did it?” “Rather Sexy” has a freaky churn to it that reminds me of a lot of Matthew Dear’s best work, but the dark claustrophobic tone is contrasted with a smooth vocal that’s urging us to chill out a bit. He seems like he ought to be wearing a silk robe and offering us “relaxants.” It really completes the vibe.

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Of Monsters and Men “Alligator”

“Alligator” is an outlier for Of Monsters and Men – a very mid-00s sort of hard-charging dance rock anthem coming from a band more at home in an 2010s indie-folk mode. This fact is a bit maddening in that this song exhibits such a mastery of up tempo rock dynamics that it’s hard to comprehend why they’d only do this once, and why the rest of the album this song comes from sounds nothing like it. Like, not just that the other songs don’t rock in the same way, but that they sound like a completely different band in an aggravating band-and-switch sort of way.

“Alligator” is a song with a relentless, focused drive and a restless energy. The arrangement is constantly shifting – the structure is straightforward verse/chorus/verse, but the music never lets your ear settle into anything for more than 10 seconds or so before dropping something out or layering something else in. Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir’s voice is a revelation here, showing off a sort of grit and sassiness that wasn’t quite there on previous material, and a earthy intensity that keeps the soaring chorus from getting too corny. There’s a general feeling of empowerment to the song, but it’s all grounded in something dark and elemental that’s suggested but not fully explicated by the lyrics – there’s stars and light and soil and water, and rituals of life, death, and rebirth. The hook is “wake me up, I’m fever dreaming,” but it’s never quite clear what part of this is the dream.

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Bat for Lashes “So Good”

Bat for Lashes’ fifth album Lost Girls is a logical culmination of Natasha Khan’s body of work to date – an atmospheric synth pop record about supernatural romance set in a nostalgic ultra-cinematic version of late 20th century Los Angeles. Everything about the record and the visuals she has made to go along with it is extremely on-brand, to the point that while it’s all very good, it’s vaguely disappointing to me in the sense that as a long term fan I think I’d be more excited by a more radical stylistic or thematic shift. But that’s a cheap complaint when so few artists today can conjure this sort of extreme romanticism, even though there are so many who try. Khan’s craft is top shelf, her voice is gorgeous and distinctive, her taste is exquisite, and her reference points are specific.

“So Good” is the song on Lost Girls that strays furthest from Khan’s earlier work while staying firmly in the conceptual boundaries of the project. It’s a different flavor of ‘80s pop than she’s tried before – more bubbly and heavily programmed, and a bit closer to “cheesy” than “sexy.” It’s the song in the cycle in which her character swoons over the sexy vampire man while acknowledging his darkness and cruelty, and realizing that this turns her on. She sings the verses in a lower register but shifts up to her more natural high notes on the chorus, and the whole song brightens in that sequence. But it’s not a light of clarity – it’s more like a disorienting strobe light, and if she can focus at all it’s on small slivers of the moment she’s in.

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Hot Chip “Hungry Child”

Hot Chip have reached a moment of their career where their live show is essentially a DJ set of their greatest hits, and they present this to audiences with a maximum level of pride and zero shame. They are DJs at heart, and despite a lot of strong album tracks, they’ve also always been a classic singles band. Last night at Brooklyn Steel the group opened their show with a parade of some of their most crowd-pleasing songs – “Haurache Lights,” “One Life Stand,” “Night & Day,” “Flutes,” “Over & Over” – in the way a good DJ aims to get people on the floor as quickly as possible. It’s the opposite of how most live bands would sequence a show, with the goal of building towards a climax in the final third of a set. But the DJ logic works, and when they moved from “Over & Over” into the more recent single “Hungry Child,” the audience was primed to greet it as another great banger rather than an untested new tune to be burned off before the real hits.

It seems like part of Hot Chip’s ongoing project is creating a body of work that lends itself to this sort of performance or a killer greatest hits compilation, and writing new songs is a bit like figuring out what sort of songs they need to improve that end result. “Hungry Child” has a particular utility as a more pure sort of house track than they’ve typically made before, and brings in tropes of the genre that haven’t featured on the other hits. I particularly love the gospel-house elements, and the way the neutral but plaintive tones of Alexis Taylor’s voice contrast with an overtly passionate sound.

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Ghost Funk Orchestra “Modern Scene”

Ghost Funk Orchestra make a jazzy sort of psychedelic rock that I suppose is essentially nostalgic in its major debt to ’60s recordings, but the actual music feels disconnected from any particular time or place, as it’s really just bandleader Seth Applebaum piecing together an imagined past from scraps of old music he finds beautiful and interesting. (As a collector of old magazines, I feel like I’m recognizing some common instincts.) Their new record A Song for Paul has an aesthetic kinship with Broadcast in their The Noise Made By People phase – the music sounds “accurate,” but there’s a slight implied ironic distance and enough modern touches to keep it from seeming like a replica. The most noticeable difference is in the vocal performance, which signals “indie” more than “60s” and contrasts with the more obviously retro funk psychedelia elements like a neon green stripe through a black and white photograph.

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Cigarettes After Sex “Heavenly”

There’s no catch to “Heavenly.” It’s a romantic song about romantic love, with nothing to subvert or undermine that feeling. Greg Gonzalez sings his lyrics with an earnest purity – his voice is soft and gentle, but there’s also a firm certainty in his phrasing. The music conveys lovey-dovey infatuation without a trace of anxiety or impatience. Gonzalez is presenting an idealized version of the sort of intense love that seems to stop time, or at least slow it down to a crawl. It sounds like eyes locking, lips pulling back from a kiss, and the tiniest physical sensations amplified times a hundred.

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Lana Del Rey “Norman Fucking Rockwell”

What must it be like to be a man in a Lana Del Rey song? It’s a lot of mixed messages, for sure. The subject of this song gets high praise at the top of the first verse – “you fucked me so good that I almost said ‘I love you’” – but almost every subsequent line drags him mercilessly for his mopey vibe, bad art, and tiresome intellectual vanity. The magic of the song is that the core emotion isn’t pettiness or anger, but rather genuine affection and empathy for this wounded mess of a man despite these flaws. She’s definitely frustrated with herself for caring about him, but even when she’s dismissing his behavior – “you’re just a man, it’s just what you do” – she won’t completely write off his humanity.

As with most Lana songs, she’s asking the listener to consider that contradictory thoughts complete each other more often that not. The “man-child” here is aggravating, but he’s interesting, and loving, and allows himself to be vulnerable with her. She probably can do better, but is “doing better” always the point of human relationships? And even if love is just a game to be won, if put under the same sort of scrutiny as the guy in this song would she or any of us come out looking good? Love can’t work unless you’re willing to deal with flaws, and “Norman Fucking Rockwell” is just asking if this guy is worth the trouble and not quite arriving at a conclusion.

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Charlotte Adigéry “Cursed and Cussed”

“Cursed and Cussed” is built on a looped breakbeat that sounds very early ‘90s, the sort of rhythm that drew a line straight through rap, new jack swing, and rave and then filtered into crossover pop in the liminal phase before gangsta rap and grunge shifted the direction of mainstream music. Charlotte Adigéry’s vocal is understated in tone but her lyrics are overtly filthy, sketching out BDSM scenes and repeating “God punishes, I beg for more” on the hook. The funniest bits of the song are when Adigéry jokingly self-censors, as when she stops the word “gloryhole” midway through to sing “hold that thought, climax control.” Adigéry sets a kinky scene, but makes it sexier by giving the audience a little wink.

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